We confess: we had been waiting for this email for years – A chance to work on an athletic commercial spot for a high profile client such as the NFL. Finally, one afternoon this September…it came. It was our friends over at Skinit, who needed a :30 second commercial to advertise their NFL branded merchandise for the new 2017 season.

SKINIT x NFL // PRE-PRODUCTION MOOD BOARD

As avid football fans, we were excited to hit the ground running on producing an uptempo high-quality commercial video for clients who trusted us to bring their vision to life. Football. Sweat. Cameras. Haze… now you’re speaking our language. Without hesitation, we jumped at the opportunity. We launched into pre-production – producing a creative pitch concept, mood board (above), cast, and location specs.

We started from square one. The only elements that were provided for us were the music (the song being used in the final edit), the Skinit products (headphones, phone cases), and the teams being represented (Steelers, Broncos, Seahawks).

One of the biggest challenges for a project like this is often locations. Within a span of 1 week we needed to secure a gym, a training facility, and a football field for a 1 day shoot. Luckily, the awesome people of Bear Fitness, Keen Performance and SKLZ were willing to not only open their doors to our production team, but also allow us to manufacture pillows of hazy fog and blast huge bright lights. Big thank you’s to them.

For this project, we wanted to make each location feel moody and raw. We decided to use a haze machine to fog the air of each location to add a bit of grit to the atmosphere. Additionally, we used colorful lighting that matched the team being represented in the scene. These two elements combined with handheld camera movements and quick cuts allowed us to create a spot that felt chaotic and fast paced – but still looked clean and high quality.

The entire shoot was an extremely fast process. We had 1 day to jump to 3 different locations all over the city and set up each scene – shoot and load out. It was run & gun on steroids. But so much fun.